2of3Rev. Cathy Stone attends the "Keep Texas Open for Business" event at the Texas Capitol in Austin on Aug. 8, 2017. Those in attendance urged the Texas Legislator to reject the bathroom bill, which ultimately failed.Photo: Stephen Spillman / Stephen Spillman

3of3Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, speaks about the importance of a new power plant during a groundbreaking ceremony at the Montgomery County Power Station on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2019 in Willis.Photo: Cody Bahn, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Many Texans have been nervously waiting for some sort of red-meat issue to derail this year’s legislative session.

Some have been worried, specifically, that Republicans would try to revive the notorious “bathroom bill” that elicited a protracted backlash during the last regular session of the Texas Legislature, in 2017.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in January said that he wasn’t planning to do so, but his explanation wasn’t convincing.

“When you win the battle, you don’t have to fight the battle again,” Patrick said.

The bathroom bill didn’t pass, ultimately. Its proponents are aware of that setback, obviously, but they may not have accepted defeat.

Now advocates for LGBTQ Texans are sounding the alarm about Senate Bill 15, authored by state Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican who represents parts of Montgomery, Harris, Chambers, Jefferson and Galveston counties.

The measure seeks to rein in local governments by restricting their power to impose certain conditions on private-sector employers.

It would bar cities from adopting ordinances requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, for example — and it would undo the paid sick leave ordinance adopted last year by the city of San Antonio.

That’s controversial enough; a recent poll from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune finds that 71 percent of state voters believe employers should be required to offer paid sick leave.

And — according to advocates — SB15 poses a particular risk to gay, lesbian and transgender Texans, because its passage could effectively gut the nondiscrimination ordinances that have been adopted in many Texas cities.

Those ordinances protect employees against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. And the first version of SB15 stated, explicitly, that ordinances that prohibit employment discrimination would not be affected by passage of the legislation.

The current version of SB15, however, does not exempt nondiscrimination ordinances. And it’s been reported that Patrick pressured Creighton to remove the language that would have had that effect.

I can believe that — and Creighton didn’t dispute it, exactly, when I asked him about the change.

“The bill doesn’t have anything to do with discrimination, so having it in or out was the same to us,” he said.

The measure is focused on ordinances that seek to regulate a private employer’s ability to set terms regarding employment leave, employment benefits, and scheduling practices.

From Creighton’s perspective, such questions are properly addressed at the state or federal level. He added that his intent seemed clear enough to the stakeholders who weighed in when the bill was taken up by the State Affairs committee last month — and that the witnesses who testified against SB15 hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about potential discriminatory effects.

It’s easy to understand why the revision of the bill has raised concerns among civil rights groups, though. The language exempting nondiscrimination ordinances may have been unnecessary, but its inclusion gave the opposite impression.

That being the case, the removal of the language was bound to raise concerns about whether the bill would affect nondiscrimination ordinances. And Republicans will struggle to allay such concerns, given the context.

“It does seem like the ghost of the bathroom bill is floating around,” Creighton said.

Texans who are haunted by its spectral presence might be reassured by the fact that business leaders who opposed the bathroom bill are among the chief proponents of this one.

A paid sick leave ordinance directly affects employers in a city or county that adopts one, and the adoption of such ordinances may have implications for Texas’s overall business climate. SB15 is designed to address such concerns, and stakeholders who support the measure won’t be dismissive of the concerns raised in light of its revision. The business community is generally supportive of LGBT rights, and of the signal sent by nondiscrimination ordinances.

And although some of the state’s social conservatives might be hoping to undermine protections against discrimination for LGBTQ Texans, many of them are focused on other issues this session.

“The growing support for infanticide demonstrates a monstrous disregard for basic human dignity, and it is vital that we take a stand on behalf of unborn children and abortion survivors in the state of Texas,” tweeted Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday.

He was expressing support for the “Texas Born-Alive Infant Protection Act,” a measure filed this week by Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano and Republican state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham — the latter of whom authored the “bathroom bill” in the 2017 session.

Erica Grieder joined the Houston Chronicle, as a metro columnist, in 2017. Prior to that she spent ten years based in Austin, reporting on politics and economics, as the southwest correspondent for The Economist, from 2007-2012, then as a senior editor at Texas Monthly, from 2012-2016. In 2013, she published her first book, "Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas." An Air Force brat, Erica thinks of San Antonio as home. She is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas's Emerging Leaders Council, and holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs and Columbia University, where she majored in philosophy.